Tears Sign
Tears Sign is the second episode of the OVA and roughly corresponds with volume 2 of Battle Angel Alita, Tears of an Angel. Plot As Yugo and Tanji prepare to leave an alley with their cyborg victim's spinal column, Vector appears and kills the cyborg to eliminate him as a witness. After admonishes Yugo for his carelessness, he tells him that he wants to talk to him. At Yugo's apartment, Gally waits for him with his neighbors, who are skeptical of his plan to get to Zalem. After turning down Vector's offer of a role in his business operations, which include control of the resources sent to Zalem via the Factory tubes, an intoxicated Yugo is dropped off by Vector, who notices Gally. In his apartment, Yugo discusses his dream of Zalem with Gally. To help him out, she embarks on a bounty hunting spree, earning bags of chips. Later, the hunter-warrior Zavan poses as a customer who takes Yugo up on his offer for a lube job. He reveals himself when he realizes that Yugo is about to paralyze him from behind. Tanji attacks Zavan, who deflects his attack and kills him. Yugo then throws a fire bottle on Zavan, engulfing him in flames and buying time to escape, but Zavan knows that there will soon be a bounty on him. Vector, who is with Chiren at his office, gets a call from Yugo apprising him of the situation and tells Yugo to bring his chips to his office. After the call, a news broadcast reveals that Zahriki, the reigning Coliseum champion after Grewcica's disappearance, has lost again. Vector tells Chiren that it will be time to rebuild Zahriki, but Chiren complains that this is moot as all her efforts seem to be fruitless. Vector then notices a newspaper piece on Gally, recognizing her. Chiren also recognizes her, and is surprised at Vector's scheme to have Gally fight in the Coliseum for him by using Yugo as leverage. He gives Chiren the task of tracking Gally down with the promise of sending her to Zalem if she succeeds. Outside Factory 33 Ido is surprised at Gally having collected 14 bounties in seven days, as she did not become a hunter-warrior for the money. As it begins to rain they discuss how Yugo and Gally feel about each other on the way home. They then discover from a bounty update broadcast that Yugo is now a bounty. Gime is shown receiving the news as well. Gally runs off to look for Yugo, not finding him at his place. Chiren, who has been on stakeout, follows her. At the same abandoned factory he visited with Gally in the previous episode, Yugo finds that he is 500,000 chips short of the 10 million he needs to buy passage to Zalem from Vector. Gally finds him here, after which they discuss what Yugo will do next. He refuses to relinquish his dream of reaching Zalem. Gally confesses her love for him, but Yugo brushes it off. Desperate to know how he feels about her, Gally confronts him. Yugo admits that they are now partners in crime, and Gally kisses him. Afterwards, Gally asks Yugo about the scar on his right wrist. As Chiren eavesdrops on their conversation, Yugo reveals his personal history about how the hand is a keepsake of his older brother, a Factory engineer who planned to fly to Zalem by constructing a hot air balloon. His wife however, betrayed him to the Factory and he was killed by Gime on the night the balloon was finished. Gally reveals that she empathizes with Yugo's sister in-law, and offers to help Yugo get to Zalem. The discussion changes something within Chiren and she pulls out a holocard that she has of her and Ido together and studies it. After the storm abates, Yugo heads outside. Hearing him suddenly scream, Gally rushes out to find Gime standing over Yugo, whose right arm has been cut off. She attacks Gime, who blocks her attack and claims his right to the bounty on Yugo. He also reveals his jealousy at Gally's having beaten him to all the bounties since Grewcica. Realizing that the relationship between her and Yugo is something more, Gime fights her with pair of swords that he connects togther. He gets Gally in position to deliver a killing blow, but she blocks his blade with her hands while charging it with electricity. A bolt of lightning that is attracted to the electric charge hits Gime, electrocuting him. As Gally holds a dying Yugo and wonders how she can save him, Chiren appears. Gally then goes to Ido's clinic with Yugo's body and head and begs him to save Yugo. After successfully transplanting Yugo's head onto a cyborg body, Ido reveals that bypassing her life support system and connecting it to Yugo's head kept his brain alive. Gally reveals that Chiren did this, which surprises Ido. Back at Vector's, Chiren tells him Yugo was killed by a hunter-warrior and that she cannot find Gally. As she is about to leave, Vector tells her that he will now send her to Zalem. As Yugo lies on the operating table, he overhears Ido tell Gally that the idea of buying passage to Zalem is a lie because no one knows this better than he does, a former citizen of Zalem. He wakes up screaming in denial, and escapes from the clinic. Gally races off in pursuit, while Ido sees the bag of Yugo's chips and becomes enraged. Going to Vector's office, Ido violently confronts him about lying to Yugo. He also discovers what is left of Chiren: organs and body parts in preservation tubes. Vector reveals that this is to fulfill a monthly quota that comes down from Zalem, and presses a button that reveals Zahriki from behind a screen. Zahriki attacks Ido, who dodges the attack and slices Zahriki in half with his rocket hammer. Zahriki's severed body flies into and kills Vector. High above Scrap Iron City, Yugo has started to walk on a Factory tube towards Zalem. Soon, a massive spiked ring comes hurtling down the tube, forcing him to jump to avoid it, but his feet are destroyed in the process. Gally reaches the base of the tube and prepares to follow Yugo, who has survived the first ring, but has lost his feet. After emerging past the clouds, Yugo can clearly see Zalem. Gally, who has caught up with him, pleads with him to return. Yugo is still adamant about reaching Zalem, but Gally convinces him that they can find a way to live in Scrap Iron City together. Another ring comes hurtling down the tube and Gally's warning comes too late as Yugo is shredded by the ring and thrown into the air. Leaping after him, Gally manages to grab his remaining arm and use her knife to secure herself to the tube. Yugo's elbow joints cannot hold however and break loose, but not before he is able to say goodbye, leaving Gally on the tube clutching his forearm. At sunset, Ido and Gally are in the Zalem dump heap. They place Yugo's forearm and Chiren's earring into a basket attached to a balloon, and release it in the direction of Zalem. Plot differences *Tanji is Yugo's only accomplice in his spinal column thefts. In the manga, another teenager named Van also assisted him.Battle 8 *Gally receives the news of Yugo becoming a bounty from a bounty terminal she passes. In the manga, Zapan broke the news when he encountered Alita and Ido at Factory 33 when he visited it to collect the bounties on Van and Tanji.Battle 9 *The abandoned factory where Yugo had his stash of chips is the same factory he took Gally to in Rusty Angel, from which he claims the best view of Zalem can be seen. In the manga, this factory was where Alita tracked Megil down to and fought him. It is where Hugo and Alita meet for the first time, and Hugo also takes Alita to the roof to get a good view of Tiphares. It is also the same factory where Hugo's brother secretly constructed the balloon and where Hugo stashed his chips.Battle 10 *When Yugo turned 10, Clive Lee killed his brother on the day the balloon he constructed to fly to Zalem was finished. In the manga, the balloon was also completed when Hugo turned 10, but Lee appeared on the night that his brother planned to leave. *Yugo's sister in-law is not named. In the manga, her name is Nana. *Gally runs out of the abandoned factory and attacks Lee with her knife, which he blocks. In the manga, she jumped through a wall and hit him with a kick. *The fight between Gally and Clive Lee is slightly longer than it is in the manga, as Lee's weapon is different. *Chiren performed the bypass of Gally's life support system which kept Yugo alive, after which she heads straight to Ido's. In the manga, Alita did this bypass herself. On her way to Ido's she was stopped by Zapan, who had gathered other hunter-warriors and a netman as backup because she was suspected of rebellion. Zapan was also the first to discover the bypass procedure, not Ido. *In the manga, Alita slicks some of Hugo's blood under her eyes after she defeats Lee. She does not do this in the OVA. *Vector is told by Chiren that Yugo was killed by a hunter-warrior then struck by lightning. In the manga, he reads about Hugo's death in a newspaper.Battle 11 *When Yugo finds out the truth about the impossibility of buying passage to Zalem, he escapes from Ido's clinic on his own. In the manga, he angrily confronted Ido about this first. *Ido confronts Vector about lying to Yugo and physically assaults him. In the manga, Hugo and Alita confront Vector in his office, but Vector emerges off from the encounter unscathed.Battle 12 *Ido kills Zahriki. In the manga, Alita defeats him. *Vector dies in the OVA, but in the manga he survives the confrontation with Alita and Hugo, continuing to play a role in the manga as well as in Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. *Gally realizes that Yugo is climbing a Factory tube when she sees them against the sky. In the manga, she was alerted to this when some of Hugo's high value chips fell from the sky on a crowd of Scrapyard residents who then began to fight over the chips. *The events from when Gally meets Yugo at the abandoned factory to his climbing the Factory tube take place on the same day, making the weather overcast when Gally goes after him on the tube. In the manga, the time frame between these two events is two days, and it is raining when Alita goes after Hugo on the tube. *The final scene in which Ido and Gally release a balloon carrying a basket aloft in the direction of Zalem containing Yugo's forearm and Chiren's earring is unique to the OVA. The manga does not state what Alita did with Hugo's forearm. References Category:Battle Angel (OVA)